Isnt Vyasadeva’s birth illegitimate?

Vyasadeva was born from the union of Parashara and Satyavati though they weren’t married. Isn’t this illegitimate?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question, Vyasadeva is said to be the writer of all the scriptures, but his birth itself was illegitimate through a union outside of wedlock. Why is that? Answer, we shouldn’t impose our own conceptions on everything everywhere. If you look at the circumstances that are described in the Mahabharata and the associated literature about the birth of Vyasadeva, then we can understand that there are many more factors involved over there than are involved in a normal union or especially in an illegitimate union.
Satyavati was a fisherwoman and her father had told her that she can attain religious merit by doing seva and the service that she was told to do was to act as a boatswoman to ferry pilgrims across a river. So once the great sage Parashara Muni came there and she took him across and as she was taking him across, the normal version in which the story is told is that Parashara became attracted to her seeing bodily features as she was pulling the oar and then he sort of because of that attraction united with her. That is only a part of the story and quite a distorted part.
Parashara Muni also saw at that particular time that according to the constellations were arranged in such a way that there was the opportunity for a great soul to appear in the world at that time and when he told this to Satyavati, she was initially taken aback and she said that she was a virgin and she couldn’t do this. So Parashara Muni assured her that it is a service to bring a manifestation of God into the world and Vyasadeva is a literary incarnation of God and such a service would never contaminate her and he reassured her that her virginity would remain intact and not only that, he told her that because she was a fisherwoman, her body would have a sort of fishy odour. So he told her that if she performs this service then her body would lose that fishy odour and become fragrant and then after that she consented and then Vyasadeva by his mystical power created a sort of mist and then Dwaipayana.
So there are many meanings to the word Dwaipayana for Dwaipayana Vyasa. The idea is that he created an island over there and on the island they united and after they united Vyasadeva was born and actually there was no long pregnancy, Vyasadeva was born immediately and not only was Vyasadeva born immediately, he immediately departed. He was a sage and he departed from there and then Parashara Muni and Satyavati also parted ways.
There is none of the normal situations over here, you know carrying a child for 9 months in pregnancy, trying to hide it or explain it she used to give back to her father and her life went on normally and later on Shantanu who was the grandparent of the grandfather of the Pandavas and Kauravas a great grandfather rather so he came there and he in that area and he was attracted to the aroma coming from somewhere and he found that it was coming from the body of Satyavati and he was attracted to her and then there is a long story how they got married so at that time there was no aspersion to her character and nothing was doubted or questioned so now we have a choice if we want to accept this if we are going to consider the story, give a fair hearing to the story then we have to hear the story fully and if we don’t want to, if we want to reject the paranormal or the supernatural part about Vyasadev being born immediately about there being conflagrations at that time about there being a miscreated, there being no long pregnancy and all that then we can just reject the whole account as mythological and say that we don’t know how Vyasadev appeared it’s just a story made up by some people so why should we accept only the part that there was union outside marriage and not accept everything else that is there in the Mahabharata associated with that story, factors which explain what happened over there so that’s why moral values are important but moral values also have to be seen in a particular context the very fact that such a great sage did this particular thing indicates that there was some higher factor involved and what that higher factor was involved is also given over there so why is such a thing done by the Lord? the Lord can appear in any way but this is also to illustrate the all-encompassing nature of bhakti that the Supreme Lord can appear from anywhere just as say there are great devotees who have appeared in lower castes Aridas Thakur appeared in Amalekshya family and many other great devotee saints have appeared in lower caste families and that indicates how Krishna’s mercy and Krishna’s potency is available for everyone so similarly here Vyasadev illustrates the appearance of Vyasadev in an extraordinary way illustrates that the Lord can appear from anywhere and he doesn’t become contaminated by that those who become instruments for his appearance become contaminated Varahadev appeared from the nose of Brahmaji still that doesn’t mitigate and when he appeared in a form of a hog but still the sages recognized him to be the Supreme Lord as did Brahma gradually so there has to be a educated vision to look at such transcendental events and if we have certain standards of morality then is it that the great sages who have lived throughout the thousands of years when Vedic culture was there in India and elsewhere and who have talked about so many scriptural incidents of lust and of how dangerous lust can be and how bad and forbidden illegitimate union is would those sages not have objected to the illegitimate birth of Vyasadev and his authority to write the Vedic literature if they had considered to be a problem now they didn’t consider it to be a problem because they understood that there were other circumstances which were important so in our society we just neglect the other circumstances mythological and just latch on to one particular point as immoral and that is a false standard Sarvametha Tritam Manni Elma Ammadasi Keshav Arjuna tells Krishna that I accept everything that you say so if you are going to analyze the incident you have to analyze all the parts of the incident and from that point of view we can fully understand we can understand that this was a transcendental event which seemed to be like mundane immorality but because the great sages who have respected Vyasadev as a literary incarnation have not considered it to be at all objectionable we should also recognize those circumstances and recognize their verdict and not imagine this to be immoral